Crushed
by dhbPATHWAY1997
Summary: Chapter 22 - 23 of City of Bones, but from Jace's point of view. How did he feel, knowing that the girl he loved and loved him back was forever out of his reach? Crushed. One-shot. Nominated for the 2011 Mortal Instruments Awards: 2nd Place for 'Angst'.


Jace's POV – _Crushed_

"Jace!"

I spun around, not believing my ears. She rushed towards me with a strange expression on her face, and I caught her effortlessly in my arms. I held her close.

"Clary," I said, my voice sounding strange even to me. "Clary, what are you doing here?"

Her face buried in my shirt, her voice was muffled: "I came for you."

"You shouldn't have," I told her. I loosened my grip on her and pulled away so as to see her better, but I wasn't perfectly happy with what I saw: the injuries to her face and neck were unbelievable. Gashes and slices, some that had been tended to an extent. Her normally vibrant red hair stuck to her forehead with sweat and blood and there was dirt and debris locked in the beautiful curls. Her face and hands, too, were covered in blood – some dried, some fresh – and to say she looked worse for wear would be a horrible understatement. But still, she was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. My hands reached up to touch her face. "My God," I murmured. "You idiot, what a thing to do." I forced the anger into my voice, but couldn't put it into my expression, into my eyes, or into my hands, which brushed her face and hair like they had minds of their own, gently and lovingly. I heard the foreign fragility creep into my voice as I asked her, whispering, "Why don't you ever _think_?"

"I _was_ thinking," she said. "I was thinking about you."

I closed my eyes, experiencing a sort of emotional overload. "If anything had happened to you…" I couldn't finish my sentence. My hands gently traced her arms down to her wrists, just trying to reassure myself that yes, she really was here, with me.

Later, when my father had come into the room, I saw the disgust and shock on her face as he explained who I really was. I was upset as she insulted him, calling him names and refusing to believe us. But through it, I couldn't help but hope that she would eventually see past it. That maybe someday, she could almost forget who my father was and what this meant for me in my place among the Clave, and…love me? Perhaps as much as I was coming to believe that I loved her?

"I did lift his curse," my father said in reference to Hodge, "but I was moved by pity. He seemed so pathetic."

"You didn't feel pity. You didn't feel anything," Clary said angrily, glaring at my father. My anger flared up.

"That's enough, Clary!" I almost shouted at her. I felt my face heat up with rage. I was devastated that Clary could do this to me now, now that I'd found my real family again. "Don't talk to my father like that."

"He's_ not your father_!"

I felt like I would have had she slapped me. I felt myself getting nearly desperate. "Why are you so determined not to believe us?"

"Because she loves you," my father said. Those were literally some of the last words I could have ever expected to have come out of his mouth, not in this moment, not about Clary, or me, not ever.

The color had completely drained from Clary's face and she turned to me, like she was expecting and dreading what I would say next. But I couldn't really say anything, for the surprise that filled me up. "What?"

So she _did_ love me? Like I loved her, perhaps? Did she want to be with me forever, like I wanted to be with her? Did she imagine our future, our lives intertwined? Imagine living in the same house, waking up next to each other and looking into my eyes, raising our children? Did she love me?

My father was looking amusedly at Clary, but she looked so still, so cornered, like a small mouse backed into a corner by a large and hungry housecat. He said, with the same amusement in his expression in his voice, "She fears I am taking advantage of you. That I have brainwashed you. It isn't so, of course." He turned back to Clary. "If you looked into your own memories, Clary, you would know it."

"Clary, I –" I had gotten to my feet, beginning to walk towards her where she looked so alone and confused.

But my father ordered me to sit down and let Clary "come to it on her own." I did as he said.

Besides having to tell Clary what my name was short for, I didn't pay much attention to the others' conversation. I was too busy, consumed by my own thoughts about Clary and my father, and my strange situation, and what the future might hold. What Clary and I might be…

But I was surprised when she guessed my middle name correctly immediately. "Jonathan," she said. "Jonathan Christopher."

I scrunched my eyebrows together in confusion and surprise. "How did you know –"

But my father cut in again, telling me that he had thought it best not to tell me stories of the mother who had abandoned me and left me with not a second glance behind her shoulder. My fingers tightened around the wine glass I held as my father told me things about my mother I'd both hoped to hear and now dreaded to hear, the most important, of course, being that she was alive.

"She is," my father said. "Alive and asleep in one of the downstairs rooms at this very moment. Yes," he said, cutting me off before I could get a syllable out, "Jocelyn is your mother, Jonathan. And Clary – Clary is your sister."

I couldn't tell what happened precisely as the wineglass slipped through my fingers and blood-red liquid poured over the snow-white tablecloth.

"Jonathan," said my father.

My face felt stiff, and somewhat cold, like it had gone white, but I also felt nauseous. "That's not true. There's been a mistake. It can't possibly be true."

My father tried to assure me that it was, but the only words I spoke to him were those filled with denial. Clary absolutely _could_ not be my sister. If she was, the only future I had with her would be the bickering, sarcastic arguments we could get into at the family reunions, the same kind of bickering that Alec and Isabelle were quite often involved in.

And if she _was_ my sister, then there was no way that I could love her the way that I did. I wanted to hold her and kiss her, not shove her aside and quarrel with her like a fond older brother. It was all too much. But the worst part was that Clary didn't even look surprised. She came around to my chair, kneeling, and tried to take my hand, but I jerked away, knotting my fingers in the drenched red tablecloth. "_Don't._"

I was devastated by it all. The girl I loved knew she was my sister and hadn't said anything. My father had known that the girl I loved was my sister and he hadn't said anything, either. Had the whole damned _world_ known that she could never be mine? This was all some cruel joke played on me by whatever divine forces willed it? And how long had my father known? Clary? Did the Lightwoods know it? Why hadn't they told me...?

I took a last chance. Clary would be the only one I would go to for the final say now. She would know. "Tell me it's not true," I begged her, glaring at the tablecloth. My vision had gone strange: it was rimmed with the red of fury but also by the blurriness of hurt and disappointed tears.

Clary hesitated, and it took all I could to blink back the tears. She swallowed audibly. "I can't do that."

So that was it. No matter what else either of them, _any_ of them could say, _anyone_… My dreams were crushed. I would not have the future I'd wanted just recently. So what if I'd only known this crazy, wonderful girl for such a short time? I was in love, but it truly wasn't meant to be – how cruelly cliché.

That night, my father and my sister – still the girl I unfortunately passionately loved – seemed to have killed me inside. My brain felt sore, my limbs were numb, my eyes stung and my heart simply and painfully ached.

Clary would always be mine in an unfortunate way. She would always be my little sister. She would never be _mine._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

**A/N: So, you like? I just finished this book yesterday and it left me with such **_**angst!**_** But I've cheated, and I know that it ends how I want it to, so now I just have to read the next two to get to my happy ending. ;) **

**Thanks for reading!**

**Hailey (Pathway)**


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